Category Archives: Joy

There appears to be a serpent in the paradise of stimming. The activity can be so delightful that it becomes addictive—distracting autistic people not only from what other people want done (schoolwork, hygiene, ABA therapy), but even from they themselves want and need (food, sleep, communication, a meaningful life). Many autism “experts” and parents worry about the potentially addictive nature of stimming, but most autistic people who write for an online audience unabashedly celebrate their stims, viewing them as wholly positive. Many of them believe stimming actually helps them function better in the world, by allowing them to concentrate on what they need to do. For these people, the stim is an effective tool, as well as a source of joy.[1]

There are, however, a few autistics who do view stimming as potentially problematic. Ido Kedar, for example, writes:

It may start small but it can take over your life- not so much life, but all you do is less important than the stim itself if it is compelling. So, it is an escapist drug and it is addictive. I used to stim a lot as a young boy, especially before I could communicate. Now I stim less because I am engaged in life at a normal level, so I stay in the world as much as I can. I am thrilled about that because I don’t want to live in Autismland flapping, tensing, and twirling my life away.[2]

But to describe stimming as “addictive” certainly does not justify attempts to separate autistic individuals from their stims–especially if the goal is simply to make them “look normal.” If the stim is a source of pleasure, it should obviously be tolerated at least some of the time. Why should autistic people not be allowed to experience their own pleasures? And if a stim actually helps the stimmer achieve his or her goals (in other words, if it helps them focus better)–as many autistics claim–it should obviously be tolerated all of the time.

Intervention may be warranted if stimming seriously detracts from quality of life, or if it is self-injurious. However, even here, great caution is warranted. Stimming often serves as an essential coping mechanism (a response to physical or mental distress). Determining whether this is the case is no simple task, not only because the source of distress may not be obvious to neurotypicals, but also because autistic people (especially children) often have trouble identifying the source of their troubles, let alone communicating them to others. An autistic child may not realize that the unending buzz of the fluorescent lights in her classroom is setting her nerves on edge, and so she cannot ask her teacher to turn them off. She may not be aware that she dreads the bullying coming up during recess time, and is stimming to relieve anxiety. But if it can be determined that physical or mental distress is the cause of the stim, then the next step should be to see whether that distress can be alleviated in some way. ONLY if the cause of distress can be eliminated or greatly reduced should other activities such as schoolwork, hygiene or therapy be gently promoted. And it may well be the case even then, that stimming will help the autistic individual focus better on what needs to be done.

But what if the stim is self-injurious—that is, what if the autistic person is desperately trying to smother pain they cannot control with a different kind of pain (head-banging, arm-biting, etc.) that they can control? Extreme stims often (perhaps always) are a response to extreme distress that cannot be expressed in other ways. A non-verbal teenager may not be able to tell his doctor that impacted wisdom teeth are causing him constant suffering, and that he is banging his head against the wall in an attempt to distract himself. In that case, the only humane solution is to try gently to replace the harmful stim with a less destructive one—for example, head-banging and biting can often be replaced by deep pressure.[3] Under no circumstances, however, should aversives—bitter tastes, sudden loud noises, disgusting smells, or the application of new pain, such as electric shocks (and yes, these aversives are all still in use today, even though there is no scientific justification for them)—be used to eliminate self-injury. There are few things crueler than punishing a child (or adult, for that matter) for stimming, if the stim is all that stands between them and despair.

The most widely disseminated public narratives about autism outline the “tragedy” of the condition—the despair and misery it supposedly creates, especially among the parents of children with autism. These narratives were brought to special prominence in the controversy surrounding Autism Speaks’s notorious 2009 ad campaign “I Am Autism,” but they are also extremely common in the titles of books and articles, as well as in everyday conversation. The fact is, however, that many parents of autistic children find their family life far from “tragic.” And more importantly, many autistic people describe their own lives in very positive terms, while still acknowledging the difficulties they face.

I wanted to start this series of posts on autism and emotion with a discussion of joy, because—although the word seldom appears in media accounts of autism, and although the emotion itself has seldom been studied by researchers on autism—autistic people themselves often write about joy, about the delight and deep pleasure they find in their special interests, in the sensory world around them, and especially in the practice of “stimming.”

Here is the incomparable Julia Bascom, in a blog post that has circulated widely within the neurodiversity community, entitled “The Obsessive Joy of Autism”:

One of the things about autism is that a lot of things can make you terribly unhappy while barely affecting others. A lot of things are harder.

But some things? Some things are so much easier. Sometimes being autistic means that you get to be incredibly happy. And then you get to flap. You get to perseverate. You get to have just about the coolest obsessions. . . .

It’s that the experience is so rich. It’s textured, vibrant, and layered. It exudes joy. It is a hug machine for my brain. It makes my heart pump faster and my mouth twitch back into a smile every few minutes. I feel like I’m sparkling. Every inch of me is totally engaged in and powered up by the obsession. Things are clear.

It is beautiful. It is perfect.

I flap a lot when I think about Glee or when I finish a sudoku puzzle. I make funny little sounds. I spin. I rock. I laugh. I am happy. Being autistic, to me, means a lot of different things, but one of the best things is that I can be so happy, so enraptured about things no one else understands and so wrapped up in my own joy that, not only does it not matter that no one else shares it, but it can become contagious.

If I could change three things about how the world sees autism, they would be these. That the world would see that we feel joy—sometimes a joy so intense and private and all-encompassing that it eclipses anything the world might feel. That the world would stop punishing us for our joy, stop grabbing flapping hands and eliminating interests that are not “age-appropriate”, stop shaming and gas-lighting us into believing that we are never, and can never be, happy. And that our joy would be valued in and of itself, seen as a necessary and beautiful part of our disability, pursued, and shared.[1]

The very intensity of the autistic experience—the heightened sensory experience, the deep focus on special interests, the broad awareness of multiple stimuli—can cause considerable distress when beyond the individual’s control, but it can also give rise to astonishing experiences of beauty, delight, sensual pleasure, and joy when the individual can make use of that experience for her or his own ends.

Such moments of delight are achieved primarily through what scientists often describe dismissively as “stereotypic” or “repetitive” behaviors—hand flapping, rocking, spinning, bouncing, etc. For many years, autism therapists tried to eliminate these behaviors, in an attempt to “normalize” autistic people. The mantra “quiet hands” was regularly chanted in special education classrooms. More recently, scientists and autism professionals have begun to recognize the importance of “self-stimulatory behaviors” (another scientific term for these actions) as a calming response to stressful situations. It has therefore become less common for therapists to try to eliminate them completely, although it is still usually recommended that they encourage their clients to self-soothe in more “socially acceptable” ways (by playing with fidget toys, sitting in special chairs, etc.), rather than by the means of their own choosing. However, I have never seen a scientist, teacher, or therapist recognize the importance of self-stimulation as a source of positive, indeed deeply positive, emotional experience.

The value of “stimming” is, however, a frequent theme of autistic writing (which scientists and other professionals who wish to understand autistic experience would do well to consult).[2] Rocking, hand-flapping, and spinning are not only responses to distress, but also, and much more importantly, forms of play. They provide intense satisfaction, mental stimulation, and sensory delight to autistic adults as well as children:

“When I flap I get a feeling of overwhelming joy and creative thoughts and images come from no where. My brain functioning becomes super fast and I can create perfect images or beautiful sentences in my mind.”[3]

“I have difficulty regulating many of my body functions such as heat and cold or being overwhelmed by too much motion, light, sounds, etc. but I have access to a deep, deep, deep joy by manipulating movement, light, sounds, etc. on my own.[4]”

“In the past year I have rediscovered the joy of stimming. I have unearthed a playfulness within me that I thought was lost.”[5]

This “obsessive joy” is a wonderfully positive thing—that should be encouraged in autistic children and celebrated in autistic adults. It can, however, also have an addictive quality, which I will discuss in my next post.